Open file with password

PeaZip, like any archive management utility, needs the user to provide
the correct password to work on
encypted archives, in order to access and extract encrypted files,
and in some
cases even to list the content of the archive - i.e. if sender used
"encrypt filenames" option (7Z archives) making archive table of
content unreadable without providing correct password.

Recover lost /
forgotten
password

The person who created (and
encoded) the archive is the only one
to know the decryption password, and the only one that should be
contacted to
obtain the
password in case it has been lost or forgotten by the recipient - or to
provide a non-encrypted "unlocked" version of the file.Current
revisions of mainstream archive formats like (7Z, ARC, PEA,
RAR, and ZIP) uses strong encryption, and it is unlikely to remove
password-protection by trial (or with brute
force password removal
utilities) if the password is not known or it was
forgotten.Dictionary based
password remover tools may be more efficient than
brute-force routines, but strong passwords usually defeats the purpose
of similar programs
- randomly generated passwords, or long
passphrases using mixed case, numbers and symbols replacements (as
in Diceware rules), cannot usually get guessed & removed by such
tools.Unlocking an unreadable
archive by attempting password recovery is
generally not a recommended solution, to find an unknown password being
a time-consuming process
and the result not being guaranteed.

Official
PeaZip packages and website NEVER
asks users a password to be downloaded / installed: if that happens
please don't
trust that package and use only official packages published on
PeaZip official domain or on reputable software distributors.

An archive can be
unreadable for various reasons, but in any case when
this occour PeaZip let te user in full control about deciding if trying
to decrypt it:

The archive
header is encrypted and it's not
possible to read it before providing the right password; in
PeaZip's
file/archive browser you can enter the password clicking the proper
context menu entry or clicking on the locker icon in the status bar or pressing F9

Hint:
if you have to work on different
archives with the same password you will not need to re-enter it since
it will be kept until you change it or close PeaZip. If you open
different instances of PeaZip each will start with no password and can
keep a different password.

The
archive may be corrupted (it can happen quite
frequently, i.e. when there is an error during a download of a file, or
due to a failure on the memory support), or be a fake file (i.e. a
non-archive file or random data renamed with archive type extension),
or in worst case it may have been purposely altered. In those cases you
will need to
re-download it from a trusted source or restore it from a reliable
backup copy.

In
some cases PeaZip
may not be able to browse archive's content because the file is
corrupted (either for accidental corruption or malicious manipulation):
PeaZip
will always let the user in control of chosing if entering a password
for trying to decrypt the archive any time an unreadable archive is
encountered - even if the file extension is not
usually associated with archives supporting encryption, as it can be
easily changed to trick unexperienced users.

If you suspect an archive file is
corrupted you can do following things:

when downloading a file from the web or while
saving a mail attachment, check if the download is reported to have
been completed correctly
(please note some download managers and some mail client make the file
available for users before the actual download is completed!)

check if the size of
the archive is the one expected

check if the
checksum/hash of the file is the one expected - some sources
reports checksum/hash of files for allowing users to perform this integrity check

open the file with an hexadecimal editor to see
if its content seems normal or if it is higly uniform filled with
zeroes (to reduce fragmentation some downloaders pre-allocates the full
size of the downloaded file, then replaces the content with the actual
file)

try to download it again or try to find
another, more reliable source (or mirror) of the same file, see if
other online users had encountered problems with the same archive

in PeaZip, you can try a decryption password, and you
can try listing archive's content in flat mode clicking on the
expand icon (or pressing
F6)

finally, try
to open it with a different extraction utility that may be more error
tolerant: please note that this may not be a good solution, as
relying on less stringent error checks on the archive may result in
unexpected and undetected errors in the extracted files.